gabriel dawe

“What we do as curators at museums is a form of teaching for students we may never meet”

Maggie Adler is Curator at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, where she organizes exhibitions that explore the breadth of American art that exists within and outside of the museum’s collection. A native of rural New York, she received her higher education atWilliams Collegein Williamstown, Massachusetts where she obtained a BA in classical languages and art history and a Masters in art history. Prior to the Amon Carter, Maggie held positions at Williams College Museum of Artand the Addison Gallery of American Artat Phillips Academy, as well as a fellowship at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In addition to her curatorial duties, she also serves as co-chair for the Association for the Historians of American Art. Though her research focuses on nineteenth-century art, she is also passionate about collaborating with contemporary artists to create large-scale commissions and has worked withJenny Holzer, Pepon Osorio, and Gabriel Dawe on site-specific installations. She is currently planning a major commission with artist Mark Dion and collaborating on a traveling exhibition pairing Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington.

I recently sat down with Maggie in the main gallery of the Amon Carter where we discussed her attraction to Williams College, her love of Winslow Homer, the color theory of Michel Eugène Chevreul, her winding career path, what makes the Amon Carter unique, and finding contemporary work that fits within the museum’s narrative.